Written on May 14, 2012 by frances

Jute Disintegration – #1

Yesterday began proper something Dasniya and I have been talking about for a while – a performance/installation of ropes plus other things. It is somewhat inevitable, really, given the previous photo shoots, workshops, classes, where ideas obviously lead eventually to something like this.

We played with some tasks, instructions, methods or organizing ourselves and each other, of my newly-discovered “30 second responsible/unhelpful shibari figure technique” … I was reminded to think of Hans during Settlement, and the various improvisations and tasks that caused a certain inventiveness by exhausting the most obvious ideas and the subsequent ones also.

The last couple of hours found us arranged around a table, Rui reading from Burrough’s The Soft Machine, Dasniya having an idea for this with food as her next unshibari project, me trying to fit in and take photos, Monica, Antek, Ursula and Andreas also at seats, while Hartmut prepared Matcha for us.

Next Sunday, we repeat again. Possibly with more people, possibly with people watching.

Something of what it was…

Jute Disintegration – Rui reading

Jute Disintegration – Andreas

Jute Disintegration – Rui and table

Jute Disintegration – Monica and Antek

Jute Disintegration – Dasniya’s legs

Jute Disintegration – The table

Jute Disintegration – Dasniya above table

Jute Disintegration – Rui reading again

Jute Disintegration – Table tableau

Jute Disintegration – Rui and Andreas reading

Jute Disintegration – Dasniya and Hartmut

Jute Disintegration – Andreas

Written on April 7, 2012 by frances

es schneite

Snow? In April? Spring and winter this year has been decidedly odd. It really did feel like snowing this morning, and walking home this evening I was flecked with tiny white grains, not quite snow, not quite hail, and then this … great beasts of snow.

I think it’s a fitting birthday image for supernaut.

Video? Yes!

Es schneite

Written on March 26, 2012 by frances

Onions (during shibari)

Yesterday we ventured below into Alte Kantine for another Sunday workshop. More self-suspension, excessive sugar, soup, and other things beginning with ‘s’. No photos of people tied up and hanging.

Sometimes I find the combination of light, size of the room, and my camera makes for difficulty in photographing anything. I like finding compositions that include several people and are somewhat tableau-like, but the background in the space is not so conducive to this, nor the lighting, nor that my camera goes all crazy-fisheye when I shoot without any zoom like this. All things that could be remedied with a little creativity (or by throwing euros at something).

Instead I decided to photograph some onions, ginger, either sprouting or withering on a very well-lit shelf at the counter. One thing my camera does very well is close-up under good light. Perhaps I shall photograph spring for a bit…

Still life — onions, ginger

Still life — onions under green light

Written on February 21, 2012 by frances

Mehr Schnee denn je

Just when it looked like winter was lost … leichter then stärker then mäßiger Schnee! Aber später kommt Regen, und dann der Schnee ist verloren.

Written on November 26, 2011 by frances

Ivo’s Studio

Red sky in the morning, and a chaotic arrival to Brussels. Somehow I thought Chaussee de Mons ran parallel to Rue de Anspach, and so we walked along the two long sides of the triangle getting there from Parvais de St. Gilles. Then I discovered it was also the street Ivo has his studio on, so we stopped there. Talking, also with Barbara who was visiting, an afternoon doze, dinner of lamb, hummous, rice and steamed vegetables, more talking and music, followed much later by coffee, fruit, and chocolate croissants for a late breakfast … and I decided to take some photos of Ivo’s work, taxidermic animals dipped in acrylic paint and wrapped in masking tape, overwhelmed with glitter; broken glass glued into clumps with more paint and glitter; painting oozing as they dried …

Arrival in Brussels then. We start on Monday, though already this feels unexpectedly close and the mundane preparations to support this – shopping for food, unpacking – seem to have gouged a hollow in the day.

Some photos …

headless bird, green glitter wings

mineralised broken glass, some glitter

cotton pads, more glitter, sequins

white flower-tractor, painting

studio with florescent lights

acrylic ferret, trench-digging tools

Written on September 2, 2011 by frances

Madrid rehearsals day 5 – casa de campo

Today was the last day of us together as the foursome rehearsing. Instead of going into the studio, we arose early – 7am, and caught a bus to Casa de Campo. Many bags, some pastries and other food, a suitcase of ropes, cameras. We made shibari in the dry grass, trees, bushes … For now the photos are for us, not even sorted or made sense of, but some I thought are nice to be here, maybe that find something of the feeling of the day.

a tree in casa de campo

michael, gala, dasniya, suitcase of ropes

ants taking breakfast for a walk

moss, branch, rope

tree bondage

Written on September 1, 2011 by frances

Madrid rehearsals day 4

Ballet first with Dasniya. In ropes. A pity no pictures of that. Something in the distraction of being tied up while at the barre gave some new freedom. Maybe also the last two weeks of regular class (along with wobble board and free weights in the studio) is starting to have an effect.

Later … I work on something that I think will go in abjection. Perhaps it won’t but I know at least that whatever it is that it becomes, the start was where I found myself. Namely in fondu cou de pied, with arched back until my view was that of the ceiling and my sternum stretched open while arms, fingers, twitched and fluttered.

I decided after yesterday to throw away as many of my habitual ideas as I could as they showed up. Gone for now is years of improvisation technology methods, various other things from other choreographers, theatre directors, others, that I have worked with; gone also any physical habit I see on my body. Gone too for this, is working with other people; it’s just me and solitude. It’s a lot to junk, and of course I’m not possessed with the illusion that some kind of year zero is possible or desirable … necessary, but it seems – if I am starting again – like a good place to start.

It’s curious also, that after all these years of study, choreographing, performing, and my attendant agonies with dancing – as in the regimented physical representation of choreography – I feel I can now dance and it’s for something.

Written on August 30, 2011 by frances

Madrid rehearsals day 2

From where I stay, it is a walk downhill across the south of the centre of Madrid, westwards to the river – I think. This morning I taught yoga. It’s been some time since I last did any, yet almost every night I’ve berated myself for not doing at least a few sun salutes or something.

So we made our sweaty way through something like my standard routine. I like it for the physicality; it requires after a time some muscle pushing to get through, and the rhythm from one pose to another lends an endurance quality. After, I found some free weights, and so decided to even out the imbalance between left and right arms (surely not a single-day task).

Dasniya started, working on a something ballet / something not duo / pas de deux of Gala and Michael. They fit very well together, height, strength, attitude – it makes for dancing that can be eerily in unison. It’s nice for me also to see Dasniya in a studio working with dancers, choreographing. Quite a new thing for me to see with her.

Lunch in the park. Coffee from the machine in the hall.

Michael started after lunch, working first with some things for us to do, whispered to each, causing amusement for him and us, and then me finding myself inserted into the duo he’d been working on with Gala and Dasniya last week. So, I dance.

Gala and I found we partner together quite well somehow, during process/unprocess, and this is carrying over into the days here. Partnering Dasniya – or even dancing with her in any way other than in ballet class – is new, but it also finds a similarity. Perhaps because we are all tall, and have known each other for years.

Which I was thinking, while watching Gala rehearse the other two with a chair, in this vast studio in Madrid – that working with your friends, making art or theatre or dance or whatever you want to call it, is pretty much the best thing one can do.

We ate soup and drank some wine for dinner in a small café delicatessen on the top of the hill at Anton Martin. Tomorrow, I teach again, and work on some more of my things. Friday we plan for shibari and photos in the Casa de Campo.

Madrid Rehearsals – 7

Madrid Rehearsals – 8

Madrid Rehearsals – 9

Madrid Rehearsals – 10

Madrid Rehearsals – 11

Madrid Rehearsals – 12

Madrid Rehearsals – 13

Written on August 30, 2011 by frances

madrid rehearsals day 1

Some photos from Monday – three each from my and Dasniya’s rehearsals after ballet in the morning with Michael…

madrid rehearsals – 1

madrid rehearsals – 2

madrid rehearsals – 3

madrid rehearsals – 4

madrid rehearsals – 5

madrid rehearsals – 6

Written on August 4, 2011 by frances

It was quite a slow return

I slept much of the way, or rather failed to stave off falling awake. It must have been not pretty for those close enough to endure watching me struggle so.

Having decided the difference between flying from Brussels to Berlin and catching a train was around the order of three hours (one and a bit hour flight means nothing when check-in is two before and airport is another one to get to), and with the extra pleasure of no baggage weight limit nor irritation of customs, I thought sitting staring at the fields being harvested, train stations, small towns I’d never visit, let alone remember a day later, would be a pretty way to spend an afternoon.

Ah, well, the air-conditioning breaking down, getting stuck in aforementioned small town for half an hour, thus missing the connection at Köln, so waiting there for over an hour, to find myself on a train going extremely slowly (which is to say not moving at all) somewhere east of Hannover while the entire contents of an unassembled railway line thudded past almost as slowly in the opposite direction … I was close to dehydration by the time Berlin hove into view, and decided unanimously that waiting for the U55 line to be finished was not as desirable as catching a taxi.

In Berlin again, after more than three weeks absence. So long that riding my bike caused suffering. Lucky Wednesday was the Wedding Markets behind the Rathaus, so I succumbed to the cries of, “Bitchin! Bitchin! Angebot!” (In truth, they are saying ‘Bitte Schön’, but it’s abbreviated in such a way as to annul resistance to buying 2 kilos of peaches for 1 euro).

Some books had arrived also, one of which I shall write on when I experience lucidity.

Along with all this, I have been subjected to getting up early. Rehearsals with Daniel Schlusser over Skype. Shall write of this also.

The train station at Liège is one of the most ‘smooth, cool lines of the future; arriving now’ cocoons of architecture I’ve seen. It says, “Please photograph me”. So I did.